Lead Me On 20th Anniversary Edition by Amy Grant

Reviewed by Michael Ehret

"Lead
Me On is honest. Grant did not have all of the answers, but she
knew the One who did."

In 1988, when Lead
Me On was released, I remember
sitting down for that first listen and, after it had played, thinking, “we’ve
done it.” By “we,” of course, I meant Christians, and by “it” I
meant, created a work of art that will not only stand the test of time for
its quality but that could also be embraced by people outside of the insular
Christian music world while retaining at its very core and sound, realistic,
Christian worldview.

It was exciting.

Lead
Me On is honest. Grant did not have all of the answers, but she knew
the One who did. It was organic. Pop in song structure, but acoustic in sound
and production.

And the lyrics. Full of insight from songwriters,
including Grant, Michael W. Smith, Jimmy Webb, Janis Ian, Wayne Kirkpatrick,
and Gary Chapman, Grant’s
then husband, who were not afraid to explore life’s realities.

Here are some examples:

From the opener, “1974”, which reminisces
about the assurance of new faith while pleading from the present for that
freshness to stay: “ We were young, and none of us knew quite what to say. But the feeling
moved among us in silence anyway. … Down upon our knees, we had tasted
holy wine. And no one could sway us in a lifetime.” Then later: “Stay
with me. Make it ever new, so time will not undo. As the years go by, how
I need to see that’s still me.”

In the title song, Grant tackles the ages old
question: If there’s
a God, why does He allow suffering? “ Man hurts man, time and time, time again. And we drown in the wake of
our power. Somebody tell me why.” The truth is, there’s no good answer
to this question. At least none our limited human brains can grasp. So the
only answer Grant can offer is to trust that God does have the answer and
will lead us “…to a place where the river runs into Your
keeping. Lead me on, lead me on. The awaited deliverance comforts the seeking.”

Again, in “All Right” Grant freely
shares her take on the inevitability of bad things happening to good people.
Looking out to the hills, to the setting sun, I feel a cold wind bound
to come. Another change, another end I cannot see. But your faithfulness
to
me is making it all right. … Years of knockin’ on heaven’s
door have taught me this, if nothing more, that it’s all right, what
may come.

Some of this disc is hard to listen to given
how Grant’s life turned
out (she divorced Chapman in 1999 and married country star Vince Gill in
2000), but it was real. For instance, more than 10 years before her divorce
she wrote about the conflicts we all feel inside, in “Faithless Heart.”

At times the woman deep inside me wanders far from home. And in my mind
I live a life that chills me to the bone. A heart running for arms out of
reach.
But who is the stranger my longing seeks? I don’t know.

I bring this up not to poke at Grant for how she has lived her life, but
to give insight into how honest she was, lyrically, in 1988 when this disc
was first released. We all have feelings inside us that send us running,
sometimes daily, into the arms of God seeking release. But sometimes we run
the other way, too. We would do well to remember that.

“Faithless Heart” is a good place
to talk about disc 2 in this collection. Disc 2 contains almost 45 minutes
of largely ignorable bonus
material, including about 6 minutes of interview that is unenlightening.

In fact, what makes Disc 2 worth listening to
more than once is the acoustic version of “Faithless Heart” and
the little snippet of intro before it where Grant and Michael W. Smith,
who is accompanying her, work
out how best to begin. What follows turns the tune into a much more moving
and emotional song than on the original album.

Also of interest on Disc 2 are the four songs
from Lead Me On included that were recorded live in 1989 on the “Lead Me On” tour. Grant’s,
and the band’s, energy from that time, perhaps her halcyon days, is
palpable. They don’t replace the originals, but they do illuminate
them.

In 1998, CCM magazine listed Lead Me On as the #1 album in their list of
the Top 100 Greatest CCM Albums. While that is probably a keen bit of hyperbole,
the disc is certainly in the Top 10 and probably in the Top 5.

Michael Ehret is a music maven who has written about music, secular and Christian,
as a reporter for The Indianapolis Star newspaper, several Internet sites, and
even CCM magazine. He is also the editor of the newsletter Afictionado, the e-zine
of the American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), and is testing the waters with
his first novel, Beyond December, while working on his second, Skipping
July.